Medical tourism: Remove red tape and provide bold support measures

The “creative economy’’ initiative presented by President Park Geun-hye as one of her election pledges is apparently aimed at making a breakthrough in the nation’s increasingly fixed trend of low economic growth. Given the visible limitations in the manufacturing sector amid ever intensifying global competition, the first female leader won’t deny the need to groom new growth engines in service industries, especially the medical sector in which many talented Koreans are employed.

In this regard, we welcome the news that the number of foreign medical tourists visiting here is rising at a steady pace and Korean medical systems will be exported to Saudi Arabia under the so-called “Twinning Project.’’

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of foreign health tourists to Korea surpassed 150,000 last year, up 27.3 percent from a year earlier. The ministry expects the figure to reach 200,000 this year and 1 million in 2020. Last year’s revenues from medical tourism amounted to about 240 billion won ($212.4 million), a whopping 32 percent rise from 2011, with the nation’s health-related surplus estimated at $34.6 million.

Most notable is that Chinese medical travelers surged 63.7 percent to 31,472, outstripping Americans for the first time. While Japanese patients declined due largely to the yen’s devaluation, those from the Middle East continued to rise.

The landmark deal with Saudi Arabia on medical cooperation also carries significance in that the health care sector could be a new locomotive to spur the country’s growth momentum, as the construction industry did in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the agreement, Korea will export its medical knowhow and systems to the oil-rich Middle East country and the project will serve as a good occasion for our medical industry to raise its profile globally.

Medical tourism is a value-added service industry that can provide an answer to the ”jobless growth’’ that has been the painful norm since the currency crisis in the late 1990s. Given that the medical sector generally creates three times more jobs than manufacturing, Thailand sets a good example for Korea as it attracts more than 1.5 million medical tourists a year. India and Singapore also hosted 730,000 and 720,000 foreign patients last year.

Our reality is far from satisfactory, though. There has been much talk about the need to develop medical services as a next growth engine along with education, tourism and other key service industries, but little has been done, choked by administrative red tape and tough opposition arising from the possible weakening of public health care services.

The time is long overdue for Korea to act on this issue, given the desperate need to create more jobs. The “hallyu’’ or Korean wave in medical services can be realized through a two-track initiative by wooing foreign patients actively and encouraging hospitals and medical staff to go abroad. To that end, the government needs to have a forward-looking attitude toward for-profit hospitals, putting an end to the controversy that has been persistent over the past decade.

The point is to globalize our health care industry by removing outdated regulations and providing bold support measures.

source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr / The Korea Times / Home> Opinion> Editorial / April 14th, 2013